Eugenio Montale: Mottetti - VI (trans. Alan Tucker)

Eugenio Montale

MOTTETTI / MOTETS

translated by Alan Tucker

6

La speranza di pure rivederti

m’abbandonava;

e mi chiesi se questo che mi chiude

ogni senso di te, schermo d’immagini,

ha i segni della morte o dal passato

è in esso, ma distorto e fatto labile,

in tuo barbaglio:

(a Modena, tra i portici,

un servo gallonato trascinava

due sciacalli al guinzaglio).

VI

The hope of merely seeing you again

was abandoning me;

and I asked myself if what was taking away

all sense of you, this shield of imagery,

rehearsed a death, or if from the past,

but distorted and made pathetic, it is in essence

a you dazzle of what might be

(at Modena, in the arcade

a fancy dress lackey dragging

two jackals on a leash).

NOTE:
Again there was an earlier version (below) I have attempted to sober up. schermo can mean shield, screen, protection – according to my dictionary that is. I read it to refer to these poems which Montale was writing to shield himself from the absence and presence of Clizia, that he means in this sense ‘a piece of paper’. I have no doubt myself of an underlying reference to the Shield of Achilles. (cf W.H.Auden’s poem) + cf. XVIII

Mottetto VI

The hope of reconciliation

had abandoned me

and I asked myself

is this perhaps death rehearsed

with you the words of a song

too difficult to forget for too long

intellect stranded

under the pedestrian tunnel

at Swindon the workers walking

back to the carpark

every day another everyday ended

in ‘general public participation’.

and two jackals on a leash

the liver on which they feast.

14 September 2006

NMR Library, Swindon

‘that was a way of putting things …’

T.S.Eliot

Introduction

I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI

XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX